>From the Chair,
>From "A Maturity Model for Apache Projects,"
<http://community.apache.org/apache-way/apache-project-maturity-model.html>
"QU50: The project strives to respond to documented bug reports
in a timely manner."
It is also a recommended practice to acknowledge receipt of reports within some
minimum time period, sometimes 24 hours, certainly not more than 72 hours.
This note discusses crude estimation of the technical debt that the project is
accruing in terms of unresolved issues in the Bugzilla system. It is important
to appreciate the statistics as warning indicators. It is necessary to look
deeper for better understanding.
The risk of not attending to these indications is exposure of users to a
growing set of known defects and related issues that remain in the software
indefinitely.
DISCUSSION
Besides the questions posed by growing technical debt, below, perhaps the most
pressing topic for resolution this year is Improved Coordination of Issues,
near the end of this lengthy note. This requires a community approach and a
group of contributors able to work with users in providing first-line support
in identification of issues, recording issues, and directing users directly to
known solutions or work-arounds. The volunteer users who accomplish that will
require all of our support. They are also our best source of on-the-ground
experience with regard to what the major difficulties are.
All questions, proposals, corrections, and suggestions are welcome.
TECHNICAL DEBT
Using crude statistics from an earlier report, every indication is that the
rate of unresolved issues is continuing to accrue as technical debt with over
40% of arriving issues unresolved. In this case, the debt is the accumulation
of unresolved defects and the cost of a process that reduces the increase while
also paying down past debt.
As of 2015-08-05
* the oldest unresolved issue is #497 created
2001-03-02
* 24115/121298 (20%) issues unresolved from before
November, 2012
* 2232/5139 (43%) issues unresolved of
new issues from November, 2012 (after TLP)
through July, 2015
* 192/452 (42%) issues unresolved
of those created in the first
7 months of 2015
There are a number of factors that impact the quality of these statistics,
including
* Unresolved issues are not differentiated by type.
Feature and enhancement requests are counted among
confirmed defects.
* The resolved portion includes issues rejected as
duplicates, as lacking supporting information,
and as usability/support matters rejected as not
being bugs, even when obviously about defects.
There is every reason to fear that, after such adjustments, the rate of
technical debt accrual is even greater than 42-43%.
CONTEXT
2012-11: #121299 First new issue in the Bugzilla of the AOO Top Level Project.
2015-07: #126439 Last new issue in the Bugzilla at the end of July, 2015.
By years at the TLP, (2012 and 2015 partial)
2012 2013 2014 2015
929 2136 1739 441 BZ items/month
133 198 170 65 New issues/month
(averages are rounded to whole numbers)
The rate of arrival of new issues is steadily declining from the 2013 peak.
That is not necessarily good news. It does not demonstrate better proportional
clearing of the smaller number.
PROPOSED MITIGATION
The project is currently in a crunch to release Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2. There
will be a bump in Bugzilla activity after which there can be a fresh look at
this situation and the developers now heads-down on 4.1.2 can look to the
horizon beyond.
MONITORING. These data will be updated monthly, using the July 2015 state as a
baseline with respect to changes in the technical debt and rate of increase. A
new baseline from December 2015 can be used for 2016, continuing on an annual
basis thereafter.
REVIEW. Some drill-down is required to differentiate between unresolved
feature and enhancement requests in contrast to reports that relate to defects
of some kind. It is also important to understand the incidence of duplicates
for still-unresolved issues and issues that are marked resolved without any
action having taken place.
IMPROVED COORDINATION OF ISSUES. Issues involve far more than identified bugs.
Reported issues are valuable information about experiences of users and others
and where their difficulties arise. There is no means to determine how many
others experience an issue and do not report it.
It is important that usability issues of many kinds be captured, tracked and
mitigated wherever possible. Appropriate categories should be added to the
Bugzilla and issues of such kinds should be embraced as the gifts that they
are. Simple additions to the current Bugzilla classifications will be
investigated.
In addition, many issues are recognized on the mailing lists and forums. It
is important that there be cross-talk among the different volunteer supporters
and that there be no direction of users to other places instead of providing
some positive assistance. This involves more engagement and communication
among those who work with the Bugzilla, the mailing lists, and the forums to
ensure that all avenues are covered. It is desirable for users to be supported
with positive assistance no matter how they bring their situation to the
attention of the project. Accomplishing that is open for discussion. "It
takes a village."
-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 19:57
To: [email protected]
Subject: STATE OF AOO: Overall Bugzilla Activity through July 2015
In looking for visible indicators of project activity, I created an overview of
Bugzilla activity from November 2012 through July 2015.
This is a high-level view of gross activity and does not provide fine details.
There is still an interesting picture.
My complete tabulation is available in a PDF document at
<http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/openoffice/pmc/project-state/2015-07-BZ-OverallActivity-2015-08-05-dh.pdf>.
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